Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working-Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest

By Patrick J. Finn

Book Overview

A comprehensive update of the classic study that delivers both a passionate plea and strategies for teachers, parents, and community organizers to give working-class children the same type of empowering education and powerful literacy skills that the children of upper- and middle-class people receive.

Winner of the 2010 Critics Choice Award presented by the American Educational Studies Association

The classic, indispensable guide for teachers, parents, and community organizers concerned with educating working-class children, Literacy with an Attitude dares to define literacy as a powerful right of citizenship. Patrick J. Finn persuasively debunks the time-honored paradigm for teaching poor and working-class students. Our job, he argues, is not to help such students to become middle class and live middle-class lives-most don't want it. Education rather should focus on a powerful literacy-a literacy with an attitude-that enables working-class and poor students to better understand, demand, and protect their civil, political, and social rights.

This tenth-anniversary, second edition features eight new chapters and a revised and updated original text.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1438428065
• ISBN13: 9781438428062
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

This book has little to do with SES and more to do with Communication

Set aside the terms literacy and the socioeconomic status that most readers of this book focus on. Read the book in terms of communication development, and develeopment of higher oder thinking and reasoning skills. These higher order thinking skills and communication styles are found in schools who's student are successfull, and in homes where learners are engaged in functional dialogue that enables them to shape their environment and act upon it. This is the heart of Literacy with an Attitude. As a teacher, this is a must read for every teacher to evaluate their own biases and provide direction for students who do come from "under-resourced" backgrounds. This book can also be useful for parents who want to evaluate their own teaching practices- becausae we all know, as Literacy with an Attitude teaches us too, that parents are a student's first and most influential teacher. If you are teacher- read this book! Today! With the mandates of NCLB (closing the gap- even between low SES and higher), this book can provide some valuable insight and inspiration.

Essential

I found this book to be one of the most important books I've read. I was a working-class student, and Finn's description of typical attitudes astounded me, because I had those attitudes, but thought I was fiercely independent and radically individual. Oh, well. It is written in a friendly and encouraging way, and offers proven methods to improve education across class and cultural divides.

Absolutly one of the best books you'll ever read!

If you have ever wondered what the difference is between children of working class families verses those of more afluence, (hint, it isn't simply the money) if you ever wondered what the difference could possibly be that leads some children into the chute toward dead-end factory jobs, while others have jobs that hold some promise, this is the book to read! Read it, then take a closer look at your child's classsroom, their homework, they way they are spoken to, etc. Take it with you as a guide and visit the classroom often, and at different times! You may be shocked at what they are actually learning. Be warned--that reading this book gives validity to the saying "The truth will set you free, but first, it will [upset] you ... !"

Finn looks at working-class literacy versus elite literacy

This book shows literacy at a socio-economic level, and what teachers of the working-class schools need to strive for in their classrooms. It answers descriptively the reasons schooling and literacy for the America's working-class children are not the same for other levels of the social spectrum. It is insightful and inspirational!

A Must Read for Every Classroom Teacher

Partick J. Finn's book Literacy With an Attitude is an excellent book that presents a view of public schooling in working class communities that every teacher and parent should read. Finn argues, from a long list of research that is presented in an easy reading and personal style, that schools in working-class neighborhoods do not generally provide the form of literacy instruction [reading and writing] that prepares working class children for occupations of leadership and power, but instead, prepares them for occupations in manual labor, retail, and the like. Finn argues that this is not done intentionally with any overt plot, but rather, is accomplished as part of the normal social order in a society made up of professional, middle, and working class persons. Finn describes how this process works, and does so in a very convincing manner--indeed, it is difficult to put his book down once he gets rolling on this description. He concludes this book with descriptions of how to escape this form of literacy instruction and how teachers and schools can deliver literacy instruction that is enriching, leads to powerful understandings, and changes ways of thinking, not just ways of reading and writing: i.e., literacy with an attitude.